All I Can Give
by Havoka
Summary: Constantly fleeing death in the car he now lives in, Eddie attempts to siphon gas from what he assumes is an abandoned RV. He soon realizes that he's not the only survivor trying to make it alone in this world, and that giving something, even a little hope, can touch the most hardened of hearts. (eventual Lilly/Eddie)
1. Redefine

Chapter 1

_Shit. I'm almost out of gas._

The gauge blinked desperately at him. Its needle hovered dangerously close to the 'E' light, a sight he'd become all too familiar with over the past few months. Eddie pulled his hat down a bit, studying the dark road in front of him. He'd been driving for so long now. It felt like driving was all he ever did anymore. And of course, he never had a destination.

The supplies in his trunk and backseat had managed to keep him alive thus far, though just barely. He was running low on food now, and it was getting harder to find things to eat out in the wild. He'd never been a hunter.

Gas was equally difficult to come by. Most of the cars he found had already been siphoned dry by scavengers long ago. Eventually, he knew, he was going to have to stop driving and start traveling on foot. That thought absolutely terrified him. There was nothing out there – no rest stops, no safe places to crash for a night. No mercy from anyone, living or dead. It would just be him, his wits, and whatever supplies he could manage to carry on him.

The car sputtered. The gas gauge had dropped its needle to E, and the car was just rolling now. "Shit. Shit shit shit." He stomped the gas pedal. Once. Twice. The third time, practically to the floor. Nothing happened. "_Shit._"

Eddie steered the car to the shoulder of the road on its last bit of momentum. When it finally came to a halt, he laid his forehead on the steering wheel. "I'm fucked. I'm so fucked." He was out in the middle of nowhere. He couldn't see another vehicle anywhere nearby.

Unless he wanted to carry everything he had on his back, or leave it all behind, he needed to find some gas. Quickly.

He popped the trunk with the button by his left hand. Then he slipped out the door and closed it silently behind him.

A few shuffling figures marred the thick fog down the road, the way he'd come. They must have been following the noise of his engine. Doing his best to ignore the oncoming monsters, Eddie crept back to the trunk and fished out his siphoning gear – a stained length of tubing and a red plastic gas can. He closed the trunk as quietly as he could and hurried down the road, away from the walkers. There had to be some gas left around here. Some vehicle, somewhere, _had_ to still have gas in it.

He just hoped he could get that far on foot.

His car's engine having gone silent, some of the less persistent walkers seemed to lose interest. They wandered off into the surrounding woods and disappeared. Eddie allowed himself a moment of relief, despite being fully aware that there were still some walkers following him. They were in the far distance, and they moved slowly. If things went well he would able to siphon some gas before they reached him. And in case they got a little too close for comfort, he had his favorite knife in his pocket as well.

Being outside his car at night gave him an idea of just how quiet the world had gotten. He hadn't even realized before just how noisy things had been – pre-apocalypse there was no such thing as total silence. Busy streets, people talking, and the general sounds of human life had constantly filled that void. It was almost frightening, this newfound silence. It served as a constant reminder of how alone he was. How alone most survivors were. How much of the human race had been wiped off the planet.

And yet, life continued on. Crickets were chirping, loud as ever, and every so often a bat passed overhead. These creatures didn't need humans to survive. In fact, they were probably thriving without them.

Eddie scratched his arm, staring blankly ahead. There were a few vehicles scattered here and there down the road, but they looked trashed. He didn't have much hope of them holding any gasoline. Regardless, he pressed onward.

The first car he came across was a smashed-up Nissan Altima. All four of its windows were completely obliterated. A few shards of glass hung from their edges like jagged teeth, daring any brave soul to reach their hand in there and try not to get cut. Luckily, what Eddie needed wasn't from the car's blood-stained interior. He popped open the gas door and took a whiff. Only the faintest ghost of gasoline smell greeted him. As he'd figured, the car was drained.

He continued his trudge down the long road before him. A forest green pickup truck was his next target. This one had a walker inside. It banged weakly on the window as Eddie checked the gas tank. Again, nothing.

_I might really be fucked this time._ He couldn't go much farther without risking losing his way back to his car. And there wasn't another vehicle in sight the way he was headed, anyway. _This is terrible. I'm gonna have to leave my car behind._

Sighing deeply, he decided to turn around and head back. If nothing else, he could at least spend one more night sleeping in the car before he had to leave it. It was probably the last decent night's rest he'd ever get.

The walkers that had been following him were enthusiastic to see him turn around. Their rotting arms reached outward as they stumbled down the otherwise-empty road. Shifting his gas can and tubing to his left hand, Eddie pulled his knife from his right pocket and glanced down at it. He couldn't run from them forever.

The first walker went down easily. One stab to the forehead and it collapsed to the ground. The others, seemingly a bit less decayed than the almost-skeletal first one, put up more of a fight. One of the monsters managed to catch hold of his wrist while he was driving his knife downward. It opened its mouth, flashing its yellow teeth as it attempted to snap them shut on his skin. He elbowed the thing in its gut, knocking it back a step, then stuck the knife right into its eye socket. It crumpled into a bloodied heap and he stepped over it.

A few dropped walkers later, he was alone again. His car came into view, a hunk of darkness in the mist. He crept toward it. _At least I'll have one more safe night, _he thought as he rested his hand on the driver's side handle.

The door popped open quietly. As he leaned into his car to hit the trunk button again, he noticed something out the passenger window. Off the road, a short way into the woods, a large vehicle sat butted up against a tree. Partially obscured by underbrush and fog, Eddie couldn't really tell what kind of vehicle it was – just that it was large and rectangular. Judging by the size of it, it probably had a sizable gas tank.

He pulled back out of the car. Maybe he wasn't so fucked after all.

Carrying his siphoning gear over to the other side of the car, he squinted into the forest. From what he could see, the vehicle looked to be an old, beat-up RV. There didn't seem to be any sort of camp set up around it, nor did he see any lights on inside of it. He decided to approach it cautiously. Survivors had snuck up on him in the woods before.

Up close he could confirm that it was, in fact, an RV. Its blinds were all pulled down. It was stained with blood along the tires, and a few bullet holes littered its side. It had obviously seen a lot in its day.

Unlike the other vehicles, he couldn't see inside the RV to check if it was empty. He decided to creep around to the front and peer in through the windshield. No living thing presented itself to him there. The RV looked abandoned. _It's gotta be abandoned. It has to be. I need this gas._

He tiptoed back around the vehicle, to the gas door near the back. Setting his jug on the grass, he popped the door open, unscrewed the gas cap and took a sniff. The smell of gasoline assailed him. _Fuck yes._ He quickly fed his tube into the tank and drew one end to his mouth. Kneeling beside the RV, he listened hard for any alarming noises for a brief moment. He heard nothing. Only a faint autumn breeze caused any disturbance around him, rustling the multicolored leaves in the trees all around. Still he was wary, and his hands trembled as he clutched the plastic tube.

Wrapping his lips carefully around the held end of the tubing, he sucked just hard enough to draw some fuel into it. Then he quickly detached his mouth and let the precious gasoline drip into the jug. _All right. We're getting there. _He shook the tube dry, then lifted it to his mouth once more. _Just a little more and I'll be good to-_

Two wiry arms seized him from behind. He cried out, dropping everything as he struggled in the grip of the stranger holding him.

A knife blade prodded the soft skin of his throat. _His_ knife blade. He froze, staring straight ahead, unable to move without the blade jabbing at him. "P-please don't kill me." he squeaked to the unknown person, his voice cracking. "I just needed some gas. I thought this thing was abandoned. If it's not, that's – that's fine. I'll leave right now."

The attacker leaned in close to him. He could smell dirty leather and unwashed flesh on them, a chokingly strong scent.

"You made a big fucking mistake," a harsh, feminine voice hissed in his ear. The knife tip poked at the tender flesh of his throat once more. "Trying to steal from me."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry." He tried to turn his head a little, just far enough to see the person holding him. He couldn't turn enough. Her grip on him was too strong. "I didn't know it belonged to anyone. I swear."

The woman had him in an unbelievably tight hold. It was as if he were seatbelted in, with no way to unlock himself. He could feel her every breath on his neck, sending a shiver of sheer terror through him.

"Please don't kill me, man." he whimpered. "I'll give you whatever you want."

The knife eased from his throat. The woman shoved her hands into the pockets of his jeans, digging around inside them. He tried to quell his shaking as she fished around his baggy front pockets.

The woman huffed. "You don't even have anything besides this knife. Which I'm keeping."

He swallowed. "It's all in my car."

"Where's your car."

He raised his right arm slowly, gesturing back to the vehicle.

The woman grabbed him and threw him to the ground. She had him pinned before he could even recover from the blow, her hands pushing both of his wrists down into the dirt. From that angle, he managed to get a good look at her. Her skin was sallow and pale, contrasted by a mane of greasy brown hair and two piercing brown eyes. The leather he smelled was from her jacket, a filthy black layer over a stained gray undershirt. All of her clothing, down to her dirt-caked jeans, hung off her emaciated frame. She looked as if she hadn't eaten much of anything in quite a long time.

Her wide, searching eyes glared down at him. He stared hopelessly up at her, wondering if he was going to die right then and there. He probably was, he reasoned. And it was his own fault. He should've checked more thoroughly to see if anyone was living in that RV. He was no better than a looter.

"Give me the keys to your car." the woman growled.

"They're in the ignition." Eddie turned his head as much as he could, glancing up at the RV's open gas door. "But I'm out of gas. You can't get anywhere in it."

She climbed off of him. Eddie breathed a sigh of relief, thankful she hadn't opted to slit his throat right then and there. As he attempted to clamber to his feet, the woman shook her head. "No, you're staying right where you are."

A clunky, workboot-clad right foot was the next thing he saw from her. It stomped downward, right between his legs. A mangled cry fled his lungs as she ground her boot heel directly into his balls.

Seemingly satisfied with his incapacitation, she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and then headed for his car.


	2. Vitamin

Chapter 2

It took Eddie several minutes to recover from the agony of having his balls crushed by a boot heel. Staggering to his feet at long last, he carefully approached his car. The woman was hustling back toward the RV, carrying a cardboard box of supplies under each arm.

"H-hey," he called weakly, still struggling to walk normally without crying in pain, "You can't just take all my stuff. I need it."

She paused just long enough to glare at him. Then she resumed toting his boxes to her vehicle.

_I can't let her do this. I'll die without food or water._

She was already halfway back to the car. When she reached it he watched her pull a sealed water bottle out from one of the boxes, unscrew the cap and take a swig. After closing it again she tossed it back in its box and hefted the whole thing into her arms.

There was a gun in his glove box. If he could get to it, he could stop her.

Obviously regarding him as no threat, the woman strolled by with the box she'd been rooting through. As soon as she disappeared around the side of the RV, Eddie made a break for his car. He threw the front passenger door open, climbed in and opened the glove box. From the corner of his eye he saw the woman reappear and start running toward him. He managed to fish out the pistol before backing out of the car and turning to face her. Shakily, he pointed the gun at her head.

The woman immediately tensed. She held her hands out in front of her, watching him carefully.

"G-give me my stuff back." Eddie demanded, his tone less than intimidating. "I'm sorry I stole from you, but that doesn't mean you can just take my shit and leave me with nothing."

"Why not?" She took a step forward, terrifying even with a gun pointed at her. "That's how things are now. You take everything you can from a person, all they can give you, until you leave them with nothing." She looked him dead in the eye. "It happens to all of us."

"It doesn't have to." He lowered the gun just the slightest bit. "We don't have to live like that. We can...we can share, or something. I don't know. Maybe you could give me some gas, and I could give you some supplies, and then we'd both be better off than we were. And neither of us would have to die over it." He didn't want to take another life. The first time had been horrifying enough.

A long silence hovered between them. Eddie kept the gun out, low-aimed but still pointed in the woman's general direction. She looked him over, her eyes flicking from him to his gun and then back to him again.

"Do you..." He cleared his throat, stalling a bit. "Do you want to trade?"

She combed her fingers through her matted hair and cast a glance back toward her RV. Eddie stood by, nervous, waiting for an answer.

"Okay." the woman finally said. "I'll give you some gas. You give me some supplies. Then we part ways."

Gripped with relief, Eddie found himself smiling a little. "Great." His negotiating skills had never been very strong, and he was rarely able to talk his way out of bad situations. This was a first for him. "You can have that water you drank out of, by the way. No offense, but I don't want your backwash."

She strode over to him, eyes full of confidence. Despite the fact that he was the one with the gun, not her, her attitude made it clear that she was the one in charge of the situation. He was just a facilitator. "I already took everything you had." she uttered, leaning her face close to his. She was tall, he noticed. They were practically the same height. "You're lucky you ran across someone who hasn't totally embraced this world's fucked-up mentality yet. Someone who still gives a shit about the survival of other people." She drew back from him. "Because let me tell you, there are a lot of fucking people out here who would've killed you tonight."

"I-I know." He drew in a hesitant breath, letting it out before he blurted out anything he'd regret. He was used to rambling, and in situations like this he knew words mattered and that less was often more. "I appreciate you, uh, not killing me."

She looked him over once again. Her eyes were predatory, searching his for any trace of vulnerability. He became hyperaware of the fact that he was still trembling. Even showing mercy, this woman was intimidating as all hell.

"You going to siphon that gas, or what?" She jerked a thumb back toward the jug and tubing that lay on the grass beneath her open gas cap. "I've got all your supplies in my RV already. I could drive away at any second and leave you with nothing."

"Okay. Okay. I'll get on that." He approached the RV with the woman following behind him. She was still clutching his knife, turning it over in her palm. She had his best weapon. No way was he going to fire a gun in the middle of a walker-filled forest, and she knew that. That was why she was still so bold and in control of the situation. Regardless, he kept the gun pointed in her general direction as he knelt down on the grass and picked up his siphoning gear.

"All right, I just need a little. Just...enough to get me to somewhere with more cars." He slipped the tubing back into the open gas tank once more. Setting the jug upright on the grass, he lowered his lips to the other end of the tube and prepared to draw some gas out of the tank. The woman watched him with her arms folded.

A twig snapped in the distance. Eddie froze. The woman whipped around, locking immediately on to the source of the sound.

"Oh shit." Eddie scrambled to his feet as a handful of walkers limped out of the surrounding forest. _They must have been drawn by us talking._ A handful soon turned into a small horde as more monsters stumbled out from between the trees. This was the group that had been following his car.

The woman was gone in a flash. She bolted for the door of her RV, jumping in and slamming it behind her. Moments later she appeared in the driver's seat, starting up the old vehicle.

"Wait!" Eddie ran for the front of the RV. "I don't have any gas! I can't get away. You gotta let me in or something!"

She glanced down momentarily at him. Then she backed the RV up, turned it to face the street, and punched the gas. She sped off down the road, disappearing into the night fog.

"Fuck! _Fuck!_" With nowhere else to go, Eddie ran for his deadened car.


	3. New Skin

___Fuck._

He never should have tried to negotiate. He should have shot that woman when he'd had the

chance.

Walkers pounded on his windows from all angles, trying desperately to get into his car. Eddie huddled down in his seat, remaining as still as possible. ___I'm screwed. I am so screwed._

Even if he survived this attack, he no longer had any supplies to survive with. In the miraculous event he managed to make it til morning, he'd starve or dehydrate before long.

She'd taken everything. Absolutely everything. Even the bag of weed he kept under the backseat. Everything.

The minutes ticked by. Relentless, the walkers continued beating on the car with their rotten hands. Eddie tried one last time to get his car moving. It wouldn't budge. It was completely drained.

He buried his hand in his hands. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." His cussing echoed the rhythmic pounding of fists on his windows. ___I'm dead._

What a stupid, pointless way to go. All because he couldn't muster the nerve to kill that woman.

Interrupting his wallowing, two beams of light flooded his car's interior. Momentarily blinded, Eddie struggled to see what was coming at him. It was a large vehicle, he realized, bearing down on his tiny car head-on. ___Oh my God, what now?_

The noise of the vehicle drew the walkers toward it. They staggered straight into its path, reaching eagerly toward the light. The vehicle sped up, colliding with two of them and sending the monsters flying.

The RV's wipers flicked on, clearing the dark blood from the windshield. The clean glass exposed, very clearly, the woman from earlier.

She tore through a few more walkers, hitting them at an angle and speed that ensured they did not get stuck under the vehicle. The impact tossed them safely out of her path. Slowing down beside Eddie's car, she stopped when their doors were aligned.

Incredulous, Eddie inched his door open. He could no longer see the woman at the angle they were at. She seemed to be waiting for him, though. Scooping up his gun and siphoning gear from the passenger seat, he slipped out of his vehicle and quickly tugged open the door to hers.

"You came back," he breathed, slamming the door behind him. The first thing he noticed inside the RV were his supply boxes, stacked neatly under a table in the back of the vehicle. They seemingly hadn't been touched yet.

The woman stomped on the gas pedal. Eddie lurched forward, just barely catching himself on the handle of an overhead cabinet. Struggling not to lose his balance in the moving vehicle, he carefully made his way up to the front of the RV.

As the walkers faded into the distance, the woman began to slow down. Eddie leaned on the back of the driver's seat and cleared his throat.

"I see you." she responded, not turning to face him.

He realized she was eying him in the rearview mirror. He backed off a bit.

"Why did you save me?" he asked.

She nodded to the passenger seat. Still hesitant, Eddie cautiously slid into it.

"A long time ago," she eventually said, "Someone had the choice to leave me to die out on the road." She stared straight ahead, concentrating only on the path before them. "They didn't."

Eddie scratched at his stubble as he stared at her. She broke her forward gaze to study him for just a moment. Her eyes were fierce, but they held a tiny spark of warmth.

"I couldn't leave an innocent person to die. I'm not...a monster."

"Oh. Well, uh, thanks."

She nodded, eyes averted once again.

Eddie shifted in the seat and then glanced out the side window. His view was of nothing but trees and dead bodies scattered along the side of the road. If this woman hadn't shown up when she did, he would've soon become one of those many bodies. Actually, considering there wouldn't have been anyone around to put a bullet in his head, he probably would've been ___eating _those bodies.

"So..." he dared after a long silence, "You with any kind of group, or anything?"

"Are you?" The question was shot back at him with surprising venom.

"No."

The woman narrowed her eyes at nothing in particular. "I've been on my own for a while now."

"Same here."

After that initial bit of conversation, they once again fell into an uncomfortable silence. Eddie let his thoughts wander, pondering just where they were headed. The initial shock of being attacked by both a human and a group of walkers was beginning to wear off. He was starting to realize the gravity of his current situation. ___Shit, man...my car's gone. It's gone. _He was probably never going to see it again. And now he was with this terrifying woman, traveling to some strange place, completely at her mercy.

This would happen to him. ___My life is so fucked up._

But the woman had saved him. Twice, really. She could have killed him when he was robbing her of her gasoline. She didn't. Then she'd had every reason in the world to keep going when he was trapped in his car, to leave him in the dust, to let him fend for himself without any weapons or supplies. Instead she'd returned to him, and risked herself to save his life.

It didn't make sense. The only possible explanation was that, perhaps, her outward viciousness did not run all the way through to her core. That somewhere inside was a caring person, just hardened by all the shit the past four-ish months had thrown at the human race. She wouldn't have rescued him if she was heartless. There must have been something that motivated her to save his life.

He would just have to uncover it.

"So," he said after a while, "What's your name?"

She hesitated.

"Mine's Eddie."

"...Lilly."

He smiled a little. "That's a pretty name."

Lilly shot him a venomous glare.

"What?" His faint smile gave way to a fearful frown. Damn, this woman was intimidating.

"I'm waiting for the 'that's such an unfitting name for you' comment." she said flatly.

"Everybody always has one."

"Oh. Well, I don't. I think it's a chill name. And I mean, Eddie's not much better." He made a face. "'Edward'. Makes me sound like one of those weird old rich dudes who lives by himself in a castle and leaves ten million dollars when he dies to some relative he's never met."

Lilly cocked an eyebrow at him. He grinned nervously.

"Mine's short for Lillian." she murmured.

His uncertainty receded a bit. "That's cute." Noticing her scowl, he quickly amended his words.

"I mean, that's, uh, bad-ass. Solid, stone cold bad-ass. Seriously–"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Okay."

That hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped. He resumed staring out the window, not really paying attention to what he saw.. Every so often he snuck a glance at the woman, Lilly, who was making a conscious effort not to look at him. Not enough of a glance to really take in any details about her, but enough to build a rough mental image of what she looked like. He'd thought she was scowling at him during their exchanges both in the woods and inside the RV, but the more he saw of her the more he noticed she seemed to consistently look like she was scowling. Even just focusing on the road, her neutral expression more closely resembled one of anger or disgust. Maybe that was just how she looked all the time.

"How did you manage to survive on your own this long?" For once it was Lilly who initiated the conversation. The suddenness of her words almost startled him.

"I don't really know." His idle fingers tugged at his hat, pulling it down further on his forehead. "Guess I've just kinda been hiding. Running and hiding."

"You've got a lot of good stuff with you. I could see it even from outside the car."

"Yeah, I packed it all up when this started. Me and my friend, we were gonna try to get the hell out of Georgia. Figured...maybe it hadn't spread as much everywhere else."

"Is your friend dead now?" Her question was devoid of emotion. It still disturbed him to think like that, to treat death like an everyday occurrence. But who knew how much of it she'd seen in the past few months.

"He might be." Eddie lowered his eyes. "I haven't seen him in like three months. We got separated from each other."

"So you've been alone for three months, with all these supplies, and no one's ever attacked you for them?"

"No. I try to keep moving as much as I can, and when I sleep I park my car in places nobody's likely to see it."

She nodded to herself. "Guess it makes sense you're still alive then. You have survivor instincts."

Eddie scratched the sweaty skin under his hat. "I do?" He'd assumed he was just lucky.

"Of course. You have a prey animal mentality. Instead of fighting, you run and hide. It might not be the most respectable tactic, but it keeps you alive."

He stopped fidgeting long enough to consider her words. A prey animal mentality? Was she implying he was a coward?

"I fight when I have to." he decided to say.

Lilly released one hand's grip on the wheel, using her freed left hand to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Her neutral "scowl" was gone, replaced by a vague, almost-contented look.

A feeling of dread settled in the pit of Eddie's stomach. He probably shouldn't have let this woman get such a clear read of him.

"Of course you fight when you ___have _to." she said. "We all do. Even prey. But when you're not cornered, your first instinct is to run away from predators. That's how you survive."

"I...guess?" She was trying to psych him out. He didn't want to let her, but even as she spoke his inner voice was telling him to get away from her. To run...and hide. Exactly as she was saying.

Was he really like a prey animal? Spending his life fleeing instead of fighting?

"But aren't we all kind of prey animals when there are creatures out there whose only motivation is eating us?" The counterpoint rolled off his tongue before he'd even really stopped to fully consider it. It made immediate sense.

That gave her pause. She seemed to mull his point over in her head, taking her time before responding.

"You have a point," she finally replied, "but that's a matter of circumstance. I'm talking about people's base personalities, apocalypse notwithstanding. Your approach isn't everyone's approach. A lot of people I've seen charge headlong into this new world mentality. Becoming hunters. Seeking out...fresh meat. Eating anything they could catch."

"So let me guess," he said. "You're one of these big bad predator types? Some terrifying beast I should, like, live in fear of?"

Lilly chewed her bottom lip, avoiding his stare.

"No." she murmured. "I'm a prey animal, too."

The confession took him by surprise. Or was it really a confession? She could've just been trying to lure him into a false sense of security, thinking she was like him. They didn't seem very alike. But then again, when the walkers had shown up her first instinct had been to take off. And she'd only attacked Eddie outside the RV to defend herself. Technically, he had initiated the confrontation.

"You don't seem like prey." he mumbled, returning his stare to the window on his right. Still nothing outside except trees. Trees and the occasional body.

"If I wasn't, you'd be dead." She turned the wheel, sending the RV down a small road. The trees obscured the moonlight shining on the thin path, rendering the world around them even darker than before.

He made a small, thoughtful noise in response. She did have a point.

"Being prey isn't a bad thing." she continued. "In fact, I think it's the best way to be in a setting like this. Think about it – you're the most fit, the most capable of surviving. That's how prey stay alive in the first place. You've spent your whole life learning how to escape danger, how to outwit predators, how to think outside the box to solve your problems. This world is the perfect opportunity to use those skills you've honed."

Her words actually did make sense, and Eddie found himself agreeing with her. He'd always been like he was now – skittish, paranoid, quick to flee from bad situations. Maybe that was the reason he was still alive while so many other people had died. He'd always thought his fear held him back, but maybe it was actually keeping him one step ahead.

Lilly obviously had an agenda bringing this up. She wanted him to know that, no matter how fit for this world he may have realized he was, she was just as much so. Maybe even ___more _fit than him. He could never have left someone in a forest full of walkers. Although she came back for him later, her first instinct had been to leave him behind and save herself. That was pretty much the ultimate survivalist prey mentality. Run away, let the predators get the weaker and less fit one.

"Even right now while I've kept you talking, I've kept you from thinking about things I don't want you to think about." Her apathetic expression did not change. "It's a survival tactic. And you played right into it."

Eddie blinked. He'd assumed she just wanted to make conversation.

"I bet you don't even know where we are."

He glanced out the various windows on either side of him. It was too dark to see any real details of the outside. "I saw you turn down a road..."

"'A road'." Lilly cut him off. "What road?"

"I-I don't know. This road."

"There are a lot of roads in Georgia."

"I know. I just – I wasn't paying attention for a few minutes, and-"

"That'll get you killed." She cut him off. "Just so you know."

He sighed, and leaned his arm against the side window. She was right. Again. He had a terrible habit of not paying attention to his surroundings. Of just letting people lead him wherever they wanted him to go. He couldn't do that anymore. Blindly following other people wasn't any way to survive in this world.

Lilly didn't speak to him the rest of the drive. They rode in silence for about ten minutes, until she pulled out onto a main road. Back in the old days he would've said it was 'civilization' – but that obviously wasn't what it was now. Abandoned cars littered the road, granting the scene an eerie appearance of being frozen in time. It looked like a traffic jam. Only when one drew nearer to the cars could a survivor see that they were all hauntingly empty. Several had doors flung open. Just as many also had open gas caps, implying they'd been drained of their precious gasoline.

Lilly navigated the RV between the cars with perfect precision. There seemed only one clear pathway through them, just large enough for the RV to barrel through. He wondered if she'd blazed that trail herself on an earlier trip.

Eddie tried to note as many details of his surroundings as he could, lest he be quizzed later.

"Where are we going?" The question that had been weighing on his mind since stepping into the RV finally broached the open air. If she got angry with him for asking, he would simply say that he was trying to be a better survivor.

"I have a place." she responded, surprisingly open to his question. "I stay there when I'm not traveling."

"Yeah?" Eddie stretched in his seat, trying to play calm. "What's it like?"

"We're almost there. I'll show you when we get to it."

He still felt no trust for this mysterious woman. She'd obviously realized he liked to talk, kept him talking, and distracted him for nearly the entire ride. Who knew what other kind of mind tricks she was going to play on him?

He reminded himself of how close he'd come to dying before she'd saved him. He had nothing else. No other hope for survival. His car was gone, she had all his supplies, and she was obviously far more capable than he was. She didn't seem to be malicious, or sadistic, or evil in any way – there were far worse people he could have encountered out there.

Aside from the survival reasons compelling him to stay, he also found that just ___being _with someone fulfilled a basic social desire he'd pushed to the side long ago. He hadn't had any human contact since he left Wyatt. It was so nice to have someone to talk to again. Even if she was just trying to keep him disoriented about their location, holding an actual conversation with someone made things feel just a little less terrible.

He wondered if she felt the same way.

Lilly slowed down at the entrance of a small retail plaza. Eddie's gaze quickly flicked over the line of stores, trying to make note of them. A nail salon. A barber shop. A pool supply store. A clothing store. She turned in to the parking lot, driving past the smashed windows of the smaller shops as she headed for the clothing store at the end of the strip.

The windows of the clothing store were largely boarded up. "Is this where you're staying?" Eddie asked, nodding to it.

When she reached the end of the strip Lilly swung the RV around back. "Yeah." She parked it close to the back of the building, hidden from the street. "Nobody ever comes through here."

With barely any light to see by, Eddie tried to study the back of the building. Piles of rubble blocked it off from the road, but it wasn't rubble from the store itself. Other than the sign holding its name, which had fallen off and lay in shattered pieces in front of it, the store's brick walls seemed relatively untouched.

"Grab a box and let's go." Lilly pulled the keys out of the ignition and dropped them in her pocket. Then she hopped up out of the driver's seat and marched toward his supply boxes in the back.

Unsure what else to do, Eddie followed at her heels.


End file.
